There is another thing to which some devote a very considerable part of their time, and that is the reading Romances, which seems now to be thought the peculiar and only becoming study of young ladies. I confess their youth may a little adapt it to them when they were Children, and I wish they were always in their event as harmless; but I fear they often leave ill impressions behind them. Those amorous passions which 't is their design to paint to the utmost life are apt to insinuate themselves into their unwary Readers, and by an unhappy inversion a Copy shall produce an Original. When a poor young Creature shall read there of some triumphant Beauty, that has I know not how many captiv'd Knights prostrate at her feet, she will probably be tempted to think it a fine thing; and may reflect how much she loses time, that has not yet subdued one heart; and then her business will be to spread her nets, lay her toils to catch somebody who will more fatally ensnare her. And when she has once worried herself into an amour, those authors are subtil Casuists for all difficult cases that may occur in it, will instruct in the necessary artifices of deluding parents and friends, and put her ruin perfectly in her own power. And truly this seems to be so natural a consequent of this sort of study, that of all the divertisements that look so innocently, they can scarce fall upon any more hazardous. Indeed 't is very difficult to imagine what mischief is done to the world by the false notions and images of things: particularly of Love and Honour, those noblest concerns of human life, represented in these mirrors.[495]
The popularity of the French romances and the protests they aroused would naturally make the romance-loving girl a type of genuine social interest, and it is surprising that this element of Molière's Les Précieuses was not sooner taken up in English comedy. There were, to be sure, occasional references to romance-reading something in the style of Molière. In Shadwell's Bury-Fair (1689), for instance, Gertrude is apparently familiar "with Romances and Love and Honour Plays," and she complains that all the lovers talk so in the style of the romances that a girl knows in advance just what compliments she must listen to.[496] And in Wright's Female Vertuosos (1693) Sir Maurice says, "O' my Conscience, Women's Heads, now-a-days, are so stuff't up with their Trash of Romances and Poetry, that there is no Room left in 'em for Reason, or Common Sense." Later he bewails his fate more bitterly: "This Plague of Wit has infected all my Servants, even my little Boy, forsooth, can not turn the Spit now without a Pharamond or a Cassandra in his hand." But it was not till Steele's Tender Husband in 1705 that the romance-reading girl appeared in England as a developed type. Steele's Biddy Tipkin[497] is nearly half a century later than Molière's Madelon and Cathos, but they are her unquestioned ancestors.
In Molière's play the two country girls endeavor to apply to real life the ideas they have gained from the romances. Gorgibus, the father of Madelon and uncle of Cathos, is a worthy citizen whose common-sense views of life subject him to the scornful raillery of the young ladies. He endeavors to provide them with good husbands, but his straightforward methods shock their romance-tutored minds. To be greeted at the first interview with marriage proposals is a crude and coarse proceeding. If Cyrus had married Mandane, and Clélie had married Aronce at once, what would have become of Mademoiselle de Scudéry's romances Artemène and Clélie? The dull Gorgibus, and the lovers he has brought are hopelessly ignorant of le carte de Tendre, ignorant of the regions known as Billets-doux, Petits-soins, Billets-galants, Jolis-vers, and the other exactly marked stages of a well-wrought courtship. The young ladies even doubt the reality of their relationship to Gorgibus, and they reject the names Cathos and Madelon in favor of Polixène and Aminte. Gorgibus attributes all their vagaries to the reading of romances, and in the climax of his irritation exclaims to the stock of offending volumes, "Et vous, qui êtes cause de leur folie, sottes billeveseés, pernicieux amusements des esprits oisifs, romans, vers, chansons, sonnets et sonnettes, puissiez-vous être à tous les diables!"
The fundamental idea and many of the satiric details in the presentation of Biddy Tipkin in Steele's The Tender Husband exactly follow the French model. Biddy's reading is identical with that of Madelon and Cathos, but wider in scope. She refers familiarly to passages or characters in Cléopâtre, Cassandre, Pharamond, Ibrahim, Artemène, Clélie, and Almahide, showing that she had practically covered the field of romance. She is an heiress under the charge of her uncle, Hezekiah Tipkin, a banker of Lombard Street, and his sister, "an antiquated virgin with a mighty affectation for youth." Pounce, a lawyer on the lookout for a rich match for his client, the impecunious Captain Cleremont, describes Biddy thus: "Well then, since we may be free, you must understand, the young lady, by being kept from the world, has made a world of her own. She has spent all her solitude in reading romances, her head is full of shepherds, knights, flowery meads, groves, and streams, so that if you talk like a man of this world to her, you do nothing." But Cleremont, quite equal to the situation, responds, "Oh, let me alone—I have been a great traveller in fairy-land myself, I know Oroondates; Cassandra, Astræa, and Clelia are my intimate acquaintance." Pounce predicts success for the fluent Captain, but there are other plans for Biddy. Her guardians wish her to marry her cousin, Humphry Gubbin, a country lout, familiarly known as "Numps." Her attitude towards him and towards her prosaic aunt appears in the following conversation:
Niece. Was it not my gallant that whistled so charmingly in the parlour before he went out this morning? He's a most accomplished cavalier.
Aunt. Come, niece, come; you don't do well to make sport with your relations, especially with a young gentleman that has so much kindness for you.
Niece. Kindness for me! What a phrase is there to express the darts and flames, the sighs and languishings, of an expecting lover!
Aunt. Pray, niece, forbear this idle trash, and talk like other people. Your cousin Humphry will be true and hearty in what he says, and that's a great deal better than the talk and compliment of romances.
Niece. Good madam, don't wound my ears with such expressions; do you think I can ever love a man that's true and hearty? What a peasant-like amour do these coarse words import! True and hearty! Pray, aunt, endeavour a little at the embellishment of your style.
Aunt. Alack-a-day, cousin Biddy, these idle romances have quite turned your head.